


Gathered in the Gales

by seraphcelene



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6183634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphcelene/pseuds/seraphcelene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lonely, dusty truck stop half-way to Vegas is not where she ever thought to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gathered in the Gales

What they have in common is the distance that they’ve fallen. She’s making the climb uphill when they finally meet again, fighting tooth and nail for the chance at peace she saw promised in Angel’s eyes. He's living at the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle, four years post-Sam and just this side of an honorable discharge. He’s seen too much, been pushed into too many directions, and the memory of it all rests in the shadows that fall like bruises beneath his eyes.

Buffy is the measure. She stands at the apex, marks the pinnacle, the best they’ve ever done. Faith has learned to look beyond that particular peak in search of other, more manageable mountains to climb. Riley might have done the same, once upon a time, but Sam was a lie Riley told himself to get by on, and he still hasn’t recovered.

*

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light in the bar. Another moment to check for exits other than the one directly behind her (there are none) and to count the lowlifes and demons scattered around the room. Faith recognizes Riley immediately, the shape of him has haunted her for years. He sits at the bar, curled forward, elbows resting against the dulled wood. The slump in his spine doesn't fit the catalog of her memories and Faith wonders at the meanings and directions. His hair is longer and less bright. Somewhere between Sunnydale and now Riley lost that golden glow that only he and Buffy ever wore well.

A lonely, dusty truck stop half-way to Vegas is not where she ever thought to see him.

He doesn't turn when she hitches herself onto the stool beside him, and it isn't his hand that knocks hers away when she reaches for the bottle of whiskey on the bar.

The girl-demon-thing sitting on his other side hisses a warning, her sickly bile yellow eyes glazed from too many shots of Jack. Track marks march up the inside of her arm like an ant trail. Her hand is easy to catch, she's slow and clumsy.

Faith flashes a smile full of teeth. It's her calling card, that smile. It says 'Slayer' to anyone with the sense to listen. To the girl, to make it very clear, she says, "Beat it."

The demon girl curls closer to Riley, slides her hand up over his thigh and purrs a gentle whine into his ear. Faith can just make out the words ‘Trouble’ and ‘Slayer’. When he doesn't move, she hisses at him, too, and knocks the bar stool to the floor as she hops off.

"Girlfriend's got a flare for the dramatic."

Riley doesn't respond. Doesn't turn to her, doesn't confirm or deny that the bile-eyed girl is his girlfriend, just reaches across the slightly sticky bar for the whiskey bottle.

Her hand meets his over the label. The strength in her grip gives him pause and for the briefest moment his sunken, red-rimmed eyes meet hers, reflect the knowledge of what she is, if not who, and then he looks away.

"What do you want?" he asks.

"Don't you think you've had enough?" she asks in return.

"No," he answers, and she lets the bottle go.

She watches him pour himself another shot then nods at the bartender who sends a second shot glass sliding across the bar into her waiting hand.

*

Half the bottle is gone when she follows him into the bathroom. He fucks her against the wall between the urinal and the condom dispenser. It isn't how she imagined it would be, this first meeting since Sunnydale, but Faith has learned to take what she can get. Small moments -- his mouth pressed against her temple, his thumb across the peak of her nipple, his hands massaging her nape beneath the fall of her hair -- gentle, tender moments that still speak of who he used to be. It calms her somehow that he still makes those gestures. When he comes into her, it is the long, slow press of his hips that undoes her. Even here, now, in this abandoned place, pressed against the cold, dirty bathroom wall, he takes his time. Sees to her first, coaxes her gently to the brink before he gives in to the drag of desire himself. Faith wraps her legs tight around his hips as he shakes through his orgasm. She remembers him as he used to be, golden and strong. This man, shattered and bruised, makes her heart ache.

The weight of him keeps her pinned to the chilled wall. He keeps his face buried in the cradle of her neck and shoulder, his breath coming in hard, heavy gasps. Finally, he raises his head, brushes a ghost of a kiss across her jaw and says, "God, I'm tired."

Faith brushes away a lock of hair that's fallen over his brow, leans in, and kisses him in the space between his eyes. The movement pushes him deeper into her and they both shudder.

"Me, too," she murmurs.

*

Faith is the one who drives them to Vegas, Riley crumpled in the passenger seat of the Honda she rented in Victorville. The seat’s been pushed back as far as it can go, practically into the back seat, and he’s still too tall to fit comfortably.

He had followed her to the car like a lost puppy, his haunted, lonely eyes tying her stomach into knots.

“Not much leg room,” he’d said, staring at the car. The air between them filled with the icy clouds of their mingled breath.

“Wanna come with?” Faith finally asked, gently nudging his elbow with the curl of her fist. The keys in her other hand jingled false cheer into the icy desert air.

Riley blinked and took a breath, blew it out on a puff as if he were blowing out a candle or trying not to cry. Finally, he looked at her. “Sure,” he said.

She checked his arms the last time she stopped for gas, they were as smooth and solid as she remembers. 

The desert stretches brutal and sparse ahead of them. The sun is sinking to the right of them by the time they reach a motel at the edge of the city.

He sleeps through most of the night, his body curved unconsciously around hers. He's restless, though, shifting and murmuring. At dawn, he wakes her with his mouth on her breast and his hands sliding over her body.

There’s desperation in the way that he holds her too tightly, and it chafes. Faith has never been one for walls and fences and so she squirms against him, presses up with her hips and shoves him over easily. A smile plays across her mouth when she straddles him. Riley lays still, his tired eyes staring right through her.

His hands rest on her hips, his thumbs tucked into the place where her thigh creases into her leg. He could pull her closer or push her away. There’s no sense of anticipation in the hold, so she waits. “You remind me of someone,” he tells her.

*

She's laying on her back, his head on her belly, staring at the ceiling, when she asks him, "What happened to you?"

He kisses the ticklish spot just below her belly button and slides one broad hand between her thighs in response.

Faith tugs gently at his hair and chuckles. "No, not that," she says.

She doesn't want to say how she knows of him or who she is to him. She doesn't want to tell him how she tricked him in order to get at Buffy, but how she only tricked herself in the end. Now, laying quietly beneath Riley, the puff of his breath against her belly makes her feel very afraid and very foolish.

"I know what you are," he says. "When there was only one of you, I knew."

He's quiet again, in deep thought or maybe asleep. Faith doesn't mind, strokes his hair and wonders if and how she'll tell him her name. There's peace in the moment, golden and precious, laying with his head on her belly.

When Riley speaks, it's a surprise. His voice isn't heavy with sleep or memories. "Buffy Summers," he says. "You've heard of her, I'm sure."

"But you married some other girl." Faith says around the knot in her throat.

His hands tighten around her waist, a question. "You're part of the legend, too," she answers.

"Am I?" He sounds as if he doesn't believe her. "That's funny, I was barely a footnote."

"What happened to your wife?"

He rolls onto her, into the space she makes for him between her thighs, kisses his way down her body and ignores the way she tugs on his hair. He loves her gently, first with his hands and his mouth, then with his body. He makes love to her a second time, a little less gently. The third time he takes her from behind.

She's drifting into sleep, tucked into the cradle of his body, his hand over her heart, when he whispers into her ear, "She left."

 

*

Faith wakes to sun streaming in around the blinds on the windows. She doesn't need to check the bathroom or call out his name to know that she is alone.

The bed is chilly without him and she has no desire to linger, anyway. She grabs her jacket from the floor and wraps it around her naked body. The thermostat is across the room between the door and the window, and Faith turns the dial to seventy degrees before separating two of the slats on the blinds and looking out the window. The Honda is where she left it, the windows frosted over with a thin layer of ice.

Faith huddles in her jacket and thinks about breakfast, about finding Riley and telling him who she is. In that moment between truth and lies she imagines him forgiving her and taking her hand. He'd tell her, ok, and kiss her forehead, wrap her up in his golden arms and smile his golden smile at her. But that's the lie because that is who he used to be.

She thinks about the Council issued credit card and maybe checking into a hotel with room service and not leaving for a week. She could wear one of those thick, white terry cotton bathrobes, take long showers and order movies on pay per view. Faith contemplates disappearing in ways that are more complete then just not calling in. Maybe she could spend a week absent from her own tortured life as well. Just lay in a pretty, expensive hotel room and not live anyone's life at all.

Then she thinks about the night before and remembers how Riley tucked her into the cradle of his body, one hand over her heart.

 

end

**Author's Note:**

> Never would have been written without uhmidont's "exactly as it never was"
> 
> Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, et al. I'm just taking them out for a little exercise.


End file.
